SEO: Dead, Dying or Just Different?

Just as trends change in hairstyles, fashion, and technology, it appears search engines are changing the way in which they optimize and rank websites.Online Marketing agency, Brandlective, have underlined this growing shift in the dynamics of SEO.
Back in May 2015 Google altered how they assessed quality in web content, and continue today to make algorithmic changes to their system for ‘improving’ the quality of their search results (Forbes, 2015). Rand Fishkin of Moz and Inbound.org has suggested that it’s not the ‘concepts or practices’ themselves that are dying, but rather that particular ‘language’ used (Moz, 2015). This suggests that SEO is ‘evolving’ rather than dying, and progression implies that businesses must adapt to the new changes in order to be continually discovered on Google’s results pages.

One of these changes is the demand for unique, quality content that keeps the reader interested. We believe the production of regular, valuable content can be used as a safety net to protect businesses of all sizes against the consistently changing environment of SEO. However, this is no easy feat given the rise of content marketing over the last few years, raising the quality bar even higher, but we believe it’s extremely necessary considering the reports that suggest time spent on webpages has an increasingly significant impact on Google rankings (E-Consultancy, 2015). SEO has developed into an increasingly complex entity, and is no longer solely focused on keyword density and inbound links. Indeed, the primary aim when producing web content should be to make it read well, and if the content produced is relevant to the searched term entered by users in Google, then it should naturally contain keywords to related subjects anyway.
With the majority of branded conversations now taking place on social media channels, we’ve put forward a case for the influence of social media on SEO ranking. We believe that greater social reach of content, through Facebook shares or Twitter ‘retweets’, for example, will not only generate various brand awareness benefits but also drive more relevant web traffic. Our clients are often exposed to the flip side of this – the increased importance of having active and engaging social media channels. Many consumers stumble across the social media pages of businesses when seeking information about products or services because they usually have excellent SEO rankings.

Given the landscape of permanently connected consumers, we also believe that it is becoming an absolute must for all company websites to be user-friendly and easily accessible from mobile devices. In May of this year, Google announced impending SEO penalties for websites that didn’t translate faultlessly onto mobile devices (Business 2 Community, 2015). Widespread smartphone use has naturally caused increased traffic from mobile devices, and we’re certain that mobile-optimisation has already surpassed desktop. This is why we ensure that all web development services we provide are mobile-compatible as standard. Along with providing web development services, our online marketing agency aims to improve the visibility of client’s brands in search engines and on social networks.

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